r gets the warm protection which is also a delight.
Meyrick was going in for a classical scholarship, and his success, in
various ways momentous, was the more probable from the steadying
influence of Deronda's friendship.

But an imprudence of Meyrick's, committed at the beginning of the
autumn term, threatened to disappoint his hopes. With his usual
alternation between unnecessary expense and self-privation, he had
given too much money for an old engraving which fascinated him, and to
make up for it, had come from London in a third-class carriage with his
eyes exposed to a bitter wind and any irritating particles the wind
might drive before it. The consequence was a severe inflammation of the
eyes, which for some time hung over him the threat of a lasting injury.
This crushing trouble called out all Deronda's readiness to devote
himself, and he made every other occupation secondary to that of being
companion and eyes to Hans, working with him and for him at his
classics, that if possible his chance of the classical scholarship
might be saved. Hans, to keep the knowledge of his suffering from his
mother and sisters, alleged his work as a reason for passing the
Christmas at Cambridge, and his friend stayed up with him.

Meanwhile Deronda relaxed his hold on his mathematics, and Hans,
reflecting on this, at length said: "Old fellow, while you are hoisting
me you are risking yourself. With your mathematical cram one may be
like Moses or Mahomet or somebody of that sort who had to cram, and
forgot in one day what it had taken him forty to learn."

Deronda would not admit that he cared about the risk, and he had really
been beguiled into a little indifference by double sympathy: he was
very anxious that Hans should not miss the much-needed scholarship, and
he felt a revival of interest in the old studies. Still, when Hans,
rather late in the day, got able to use his own eyes, Deronda had
tenacity enough to try hard and recover his lost ground. He failed,
however; but he had the satisfaction of seeing Meyrick win.

Success, as a sort of beginning that urged completion, might have
reconciled Deronda to his university course; but the emptiness of all
things, from politics to pastimes, is never so striking to us as when
we fail in them. The loss of the personal triumph had no severity for
him, but the sense of having spent his time ineffectively in a mode of
working which had been against the grain, gave him a distaste for an